


sea change

by exley



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Alternate Self, Character Study, F/M, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:44:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exley/pseuds/exley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annabelle Watson, at a forked road. (Or, constants and variables in the life of Lady Comstock.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sea change

**Author's Note:**

> So Ken Levine revealed over twitter Anna Dewitt's mother's name, and the fact that she's an alternate version of Lady Comstock. Go fig, huh? I was instantly fascinated, and wanted to know as much about her as possible. This little ditty is the result.

His mouth is whiskey sweet, even across from a wooden table. It’s small enough that their knees touch. They’re in a smoky bar on the Lower East Side, not far from the cathouse she called her home. She smoothes the gaudy green silk gathered at her knee, keeping her lids at half-mast. (Her demure act wouldn’t fool anyone, least of all a Pinkerton.) 

He keeps talking, and his eyes never lose their knowing and intimate glint.

“As I’ve said before,” he says, and he is so young, his mouth ringed with five o’clock shadow. “It’s not right, a good young lady like yourself being single. Someone needs to settle this wild land. Whaddaya say, doll? You want to marry me?”

She laughs, and her laugh is pretty even to her own ears. His grin widens even more. Even if she wanted to, she could never shake off Booker Dewitt, not truly. He never purchased her wares nor spoke to her directly, always kept at arm’s length, dipping his hat when he saw her (she was no lady), until now.

“Booker,” she says slowly, and she hopes her eyes are just as familiar, just as lacking in propriety as his are. “You wouldn’t want a woman like me.”

“And why not?” He says, shrugging his broad shoulders. “You’re smart; have to be, living alone in a city like this. You’re strong; a man needs a strong woman at his side, a soldier doubly. And I was never gonna be set up with a blushing sweet maid, giggling in the marriage bed.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Dewitt,” she says, all matter-of-factly, as if she were still thinking it over, as if her answer wasn’t written plain across her face. “I’ll have to ask my mister.”

“Good,” he whispers, and curls his hand around hers. 

 

-

 

It’s the same bar, but she’s smoking a cigarette, and looking at the man before her sideways, unsure of what he’s proposing.

“All sins are equal in the eyes of the Lord,” he says softly, and his hand, veined and work-hardened, touches hers. “You and I, we are no better or worse than each other.”

“That so?” She says, keeping her voice even and reluctant, though the childlike part of her, the part of her that survived the cathouse and the countless johns that went with it, wants to believe. 

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, and there is such ardency, such earnestness that she looks him full in the face now, curious. “My child, there are better things dreamt of on this earth than what you know. We live in modern times, but hopes for a better life are old, and eternal. I’m on my way, but I cannot go alone. Will you take my hand?”

She studies him, with his long reddish beard and soulful green eyes. He was not the only religious nut to accost her in the streets, but he was the first to treat her like a person, to woo her, like a gentleman would for a proper lady. Even now she looks in his eyes, and she sees a man with a purpose, a man whose fervor would scare a weaker woman. 

“This is awfully sudden,” she says, putting out her cigarette in the chipped porcelain ashtray that sits, like a sentry, between them. “Mister, you’re kind, but you don’t know me at all.”

“I know that no one else would do,” he says gently. “You are not lost. You wouldn’t have met with me if you were.”

Oh no; the floodgates were breaking. Tears prick at her eyes as she lifts her chin and says, “Sir, Mister--”

“Comstock.”

“Comstock. Look, you’re a nice enough fella, I think any woman would be glad to have you. But I’m not the woman you want. Even if what you say is true, a man who’s square with the Lord deserves better than the likes of me.”

“Annabelle,” he says, and he squeezes her fingers tight. “Mary Magdalene was a woman of ill repute. She took her place at Christ’s side, as she was meant to be. Annabelle--do you believe there’s something better out there?”

She looks around, as if someone is listening. Then, she jerks her chin in a sharp nod.

“Do you hate your sins?”

Another small nod; what the hell, she had nothing else to lose.

“Are you strong enough to lead, to do what seems impossible?”

Another nod.

“Will you be my wife?”

She looks him over one more time, prevaricating. Then, she nods once more.

“Take my hand.”

She takes his hand, and doesn’t look back.

 

-

 

They are a year married and seven months pregnant; he takes on work where he can get it, and she gabs with the young ladies in their tenement building who have no idea she was once a prostitute. He comes home late, but she’s always up; he chides her for not getting enough rest, and she chides him for bringing home more imported cigars. She washes the blood off his clothes and cleans the tiny apartment, and he brings her a dozen sunflowers and some halva, just like she liked as a little girl.

They’re happy. Obnoxiously happy. Even in a grimy tenement building in the Bowery, where screaming babes and neighbors chattering in their foreign tongues bleed right through the walls, she’s happier than she’s ever been.

She’s thinking Charlotte if it’s a girl, and Henry if it’s a boy. (Booker says they’re fine names, though the poor man has never had much imagination.) She worries that her inability to keep her figure will end their marriage before it really begins, but his eyes are still dark and heavy with want as they rake over her body, and they still make love, even as she complains of hot flashes and morning sickness. 

He delights in her ripening body, kisses each sweat-dappled spot with care and desire, groans as she mounts him, rocking into him. They wake up early in the humid mornings, staring up at the ceiling with their labored breaths stirring the still, summery air.

It is while washing dishes that her water breaks, and just a quick shout down the hallway sends the little Polish girl next door running. The girl’s mother helps her into her bed and tells her in broken English to breathe, breathe; the girl, panting like a marathon runner, pulls a very harassed-looking Booker by the hand, having run all the way down several blocks to go fetch him.

The labor is agonizing; she screams and moans in alternate measure, squeezing Booker’s hand so hard that she fears his fingers might break. Her vision fuzzes out at the edges, and she feels as though she is on fire.

As soon as she hears her child’s cries she knows it’s over for the both of them. Her child (“ _dziewczynka,_ ” the Polish woman says triumphantly) squalls in her neighbor’s arms, while Booker’s hands cradle her face, searching her eyes worriedly.

“Annabelle? Annabelle, are you alri-”

“I’m fine,” she says, trying to push him away, but, curiously, finding herself too weak to raise her arms. “Just let me rest awhile.”

He holds her firmly, saying _oh god oh god don’t do this to me don’t leave me alone please_ , and she can’t think why, only that her daughter was alive in the sunlight, and that had to be enough for her.

 

-

 

The view from the clouds is amazing; miraculous, in fact. She never dreamed such a thing was possible, to stand atop a fine balcony and to look down at the clouds, and seeing the cerulean ocean through them. She had made a fine choice with the man she married, as he provided wonders.

The only thing that could make this perfect, could make this right, was if they were to have a child. Annabelle never thought much about children in her youth, but now that time is swiftly passing, she is ready to swear her love and loyalty to her husband, and to their cause. 

Though their home in the sky is beautiful and grand, she is often alone, with no one but the help for company. Her husband is a busy man; she doesn’t think anything untoward of his reliance on the Lutece woman, but instead busies herself with the thought that she is doing great works for the world.

And yet.

Sometimes, when her husband is away, or when his back is turned, she wonders. Her husband is a fine man, a good man, who always believes in her purity and spiritual wholeness. But her husband has a passion to him; not one aimed at her, though she debates whether or not that is a good thing. He has a surety to him, a sense of knowing everything he did was right, and just. It still attracts her to him, even as he grows stooped and gray. He believes in himself so wholeheartedly, that she believes in him too.

That is, until she hears a squalling infant in the guest bedroom. She looks at the babe in her husband’s arms and then at her husband, and at the Lutece woman, looking disinterested as ever. She does not want to believe the worst, but the worst is right there, staring her in the face.

There are tears, of course; there are screams, and hair tearing out, and accusations, and a few strong curse words learned on the streets of Manhattan thrown in for good measure. She has never felt so betrayed in her life. What had she been thinking, when she said she’d be his bride? Had she traded an iron cage for a golden one, closer to heaven than she’d ever imagined?

It was all she could do. She would speak to the Lutece woman. She used to be a good-time girl, and was rougher than sandpaper, even in these fancy gowns and hats. She would make destiny her own. She would show her sainted husband who was right and just.

 

-

 

On a hot summer day on the Lower East Side, Annabelle Watson considers.

She smokes a cigarette, staring at herself in her vanity mirror, her first john of the morning having left only a few minutes ago. She lifts her thick dark hair off her neck, and watches as she lets it go, falling down her sweaty back. She has yet to put on fresh clothes, still in her underthings from last night. 

She has a strange sense (impossible, unbelievable) that the day will be life-altering in some way. Somehow, something was about to happen. A sea change, or something like it. Some things in her life never changed ( _constants_ , she hears in her head; where did she hear that before?). She was a hooker, a lady of the night, whatever you’d like to call it. She liked hard liquor and long nights, and she could spit and cuss like the best of them. There’s no hope for her, not with the things she’d done.

But still.

Something crackled in the air; somehow, even with all the things that never changed, some things did ( _variables_ ). She will always meet the man from Wounded Knee. She will always die. She will always have her daughter taken away from her.

How, though, is always different.

 


End file.
